Don't turn back on welfare reform
By W. James Antle III
Web posted November 25, 2002
Next year, Congress will vote on whether to continue the historic
welfare reform legislation adopted in 1996. While there is much
progress to be made in reducing the welfare state's drag on the
productive sector of the economy and reasserting the
constitutional limits on the federal government, this legislation
confirms the validity of the basic principles of welfare reform.
Critics of Great Society-style welfare often pointed out that
massive federal expenditures were ineffective at reducing
poverty. From the time President Lyndon B. Johnson declared
his War on Poverty to the mid-1990s, the government spent $5
trillion on redistributive antipoverty programs and by some
measures the percentage of people living in poverty had
increased. Instead, these programs created an elaborate
bureaucracy economist and syndicated columnist Walter
Williams described as the "Poverty Pentagon;" economist
Jonathan Hobbs once estimated that "the welfare system sustains
a nationwide welfare industry of more than 5 million public and
private workers."
Government programs intended to provide for families that had
lost their breadwinner ended up subsidizing out-of-wedlock
births and discouraging marriage. Many observers, including
Charles Murray in his 1984 book Losing Ground, began to
make the connection between government social spending and
family breakdown. The result was not reduced poverty, but a
perpetual underclass with strong disincentives to work and a lack
of family cohesion.
By the 1990s, the once-contrarian position that the Great
Society approach to welfare had failed was the consensus. Not
only were conservatives criticizing welfare programs, moderates
and even some liberals were acknowledging serious problems
with the system and their adverse social consequences. Bill
Clinton promised to "end welfare as we know it" during the 1992
presidential campaign and told even his Democratic audiences
that public assistance should be "a second chance, not a way of
life."
Welfare reformers coalesced around these and other new ideas
about how to help the poor. By and large, they agreed that states
needed greater flexibility in administering welfare programs.
Reform-minded governors like Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin,
John Engler in Michigan and William Weld in Massachusetts
were meeting with great success in reducing welfare rolls and
moving recipients into jobs. Reformers wanted welfare benefits
to be temporary as they transitioned recipients into work. No
longer was marriage something to be neutral about or even
hostile toward – many reformers argued that the key to reducing
poverty was to reduce illegitimacy and promote strong families.
Increasingly, policymakers spoke less of welfare than of
"workfare."
These principles governed, albeit imperfectly, the landmark
reforms enacted in 1996. Aid to Families with Dependent
Children (AFDC) was replaced with Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families (TANF). Work requirements and time limits
were imposed on welfare recipients. States were given new
license to experiment with further reforms. The "marriage
penalty" faced by many welfare households was alleviated.
Since then, welfare caseloads nationwide have fallen nearly 60
percent. Many opponents of welfare reform argued that this was
merely a product of the economy – the new law took effect
amidst robust economic growth rates during the second half of
the 1990s – and predicted that the reforms would prove
disastrous during the next economic downturn. (Although Robert
Rector and Patrick Fagan of the Heritage Foundation have
pointed out that reform opponents had also predicted, falsely,
that reform would yield disastrous results even when the
economy was growing briskly.)
But recent data casts considerable doubt upon this idea. The
Washington Times reported this month that 267,000 people left
welfare between December 2001 and June 2002, a period of
poor economic performance. According to the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services, this represented a 5.1 percent
reduction in the number of individuals on welfare. During the
same time period, 75,000 families left welfare, a 3.6 percent
decline. Even amidst anemic growth and a possible recession,
the number of people on welfare continues to fall.
Most importantly, this is because the former recipients are getting
jobs. They are not simply being thrown off welfare due to time
limits, as states are allowed to exempt up to 20 percent of their
caseloads from these limits and Health and Human Services
assistant secretary for children and families Wade Horn told the
Washington Times "as far as I'm aware, there's not a single state
that has yet to even come close to bumping up to their 20
percent exemption." A 2001 Manhattan Institute study found that
following welfare reform, employment of never-married mothers
increased 50 percent, employment of single mothers who are
high school dropouts rose by two-thirds and employment of
single mothers aged 18 to 24 nearly doubled.
Other liberal predictions of gloom and doom also failed to
materialize. Despite widely circulated reports that 2.6 million
people, including 1.1 million children, would be dropped into
poverty, poverty figures actually decreased by 4.2 million people
overall and 2.3 million children during the first five years after
welfare reform was enacted. The biggest drop in child poverty
was among black children; black child poverty dropped to the
lowest point in history as 1.1 million black children moved above
the poverty line. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
projected that welfare reform would increase the "poverty gap" –
defined as total income needed to lift all poor families above the
official poverty line – by $4 billion, but the Heritage Foundation
pointed out in 2001 that the Census figures actually showed the
poverty gap decreasing by $4.5 billion.
Welfare reform expired on September 30 and though Congress
adopted a resolution to continue it for the remainder of 2002, the
Democratic Senate failed to pass reauthorization for next year
and beyond. President Bush and his new Republican majority
have an opportunity to continue reform. One of the leading
reformers in the House of Representatives during the ‘90s was
Rep. Jim Talent (R-MO), now senator-elect. Backwards
movement is now less likely.
The challenge will be to move reform forward. President Bush
should re-tool his "faith-based initiative" to make it a true transfer
of money and power from the federal government to the truly
life-changing institutions in civil society as envisioned by Marvin
Olasky's The Tragedy of American Compassion, rather than a
federal handout to religious charities that will ultimately dilute
their spiritual messages and repeat the mistake the Great Society
made with non-profit organizations. Reform should continue to
be characterized by devolution of federal programs to the states
and a general effort to reduce government dependency.
The principles that led to reform during the '90s must continue to
guide policymakers today. Welfare reform can build on past
successes rather than return to past failures.
W. James Antle III is a senior editor for Enter Stage Right.
Enter Stage Right - http://www.enterstageright.com